Have you heard the phrase “Begs the question”? Sure you have; most everyone has. But chances are, it was used incorrectly. “Begs the question” does not mean, “Raises the question,” or, “Leads to the question.” Those are distinct things.
”Begs the question” is a logical fallacy in which the desired conclusion is built into the assumptions of the logical argument. Y’know, like, “The Bible is the inspired Word of God; it says so right in the Bible.” Or (I just read this example), “Wool is superior to cotton in the winter because it has a higher wool content.” Here, the argument is fallacious, but the conclusion is correct. It can happen sometimes.
Okay, I hear you. Yes, colloquially, “Begs the question” is used in place of “raises the question.” But it shouldn’t, damnit. It has a specific meaning, and you are all ruining the language. (Okay, not really. I’m not a language prescriptivist. Just let me mourn the death of specific meaning on my own terms.)
I bring all this up because conservatives just can’t get enough of question-begging.
Take the illustrious Senator Katie Britt. Her desired conclusion: Joe Biden is responsible for all the human trafficking and raping and murdering all those “illegals” are committing. Her argument: she tells a very specific story about a girl kidnapped at 12 and then trafficked for sex. She does so in a weirdly non-specific setting. Her only hint at the location and timing: she tells this story in context of an off-puttingly-delivered speech attacking President Biden, and saying, “We wouldn't be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it's past time we start acting like it.”
At no point does she come out and directly state girls and young women are being trafficked by undocumented migrants in the US while Joe Biden is President. (More on this later. EDIT: Apparently not, since I didn’t return to it.) Her technique is one used by modern conservatives on almost all issues. She strips the story of specific context (this happened starting in 2004, and it was in Mexico), and uses rhetoric to smuggle her predetermined conclusion into the argument as if they were facts.
That is, she begs the question.
This is how modern conservatives (that is, the radicalized right) treat immigration in general. They strip context from the argument (that those seeking entrance into the US are victims seeking relief, and not criminals), and rhetorically inject the conclusion they want the public to, well, conclude.
So, see what I did there? I slipped in the conclusion I wanted you to arrive at, that modern conservatives are radicalized. I mean, this is true, but in the argument I was making, I just slipped it in without supporting facts.
Anyway, it’s not just the border. It’s their entire method in the Biden impeachment investigation. They concluded Biden is corrupt, and are looking for ways of stripping factual context and inserting their own. Sometimes this is just vague accusations (“What about the text about The Big Guy?”) and sometimes this is outright lies (Robert Hur claiming in his report that Biden couldn’t remember the date of his son Beau’s death, which transcripts reveal he did).
Here’s the thing. Sometimes begging the question is an accident. Sometimes a person doesn’t know how to construct a logical argument without introducing their conclusion as an assumption. Bias is real and pervasive. Philosophy, and to a greater extent Science, have methods of rooting out bias. That’s the point of recognizing various common fallacies, and endeavoring avoidance of them.
Deliberately stripping context from your assumptions and intentionally replacing them with your own smuggled-in conclusion is malevolent deception. It’s a lie. One could even say it’s bearing false witness.
Here’s how to recognize when they are stripping facts and replacing them with their foregone conclusion: they have very specific claims mixed up with very vague claims. If you are ever in a conversation where this happens, point out the vague claim and ask for specifics. Always ask for specific facts.
A defining characteristic of the modern radical conservative is a declared devotion to Christ. Katie Britt prominently wore a cross during her uncanny valley of a speech, as she sat in a stark kitchen and bore false witness. She was chosen by her party to riposte the President’s State of the Union address. She represented them. Most of them at least profess a devotion to Christ.
The modern radical right likes to assert our laws are based on Christian laws, like the ten commandments. It’s funny, then, that the Constitution forbids enforcing 7.5 of them, and our current system of law encodes 2.5 of them. The first two of those are easy to spot: murder and theft. The .5 comes in with the proscription against bearing false witness. That commandment is represented in law with libel and slander, both of which have very high bars to convict.
So they aren’t breaking laws when they bear false witness.
But they are breaking a commandment of their espoused faith. And they are doing so deliberately.
It kinda makes me question their actual devotion to Christ.